This presentation examines how generative and agentic AI systems reshape traditional understandings of authorship, rhetorical agency, and literacy within contemporary writing practices. Drawing on Walter Ong’s fictionalized audience, Wayne Booth’s implied author, Michel Foucault’s author-function, Roland Barthes’ “death of the author,” and Eefje Claassen’s work on author representation, the session argues that AI-mediated writing produces an “imagined author” distributed across human writers, machine systems, institutions, and algorithmic discourse. The presentation explores how students increasingly write with, for, and against AI systems while negotiating questions of authenticity, authority, labor, and technological literacy. Situating AI writing within broader rhetorical and digital literacy ecologies, the session challenges crisis-based narratives surrounding AI and composition. Participants will leave with a theoretical framework for understanding AI-mediated authorship and practical approaches for teaching rhetorical awareness, ethical AI engagement, and critical AI literacy within liberal arts education.
